I refer, of course, to the legislation he co-sponsored with Supervisor London Breed, which the Board of Supervisors is expected to approve today, modifying restrictions on pinball machines and arcade games inside city businesses. The San Francisco Chronicle did us the favor of explaining the clearly onerous existing regulations, which were passed way back in 1982 when the questionable morals of Mrs. Pacman seemed a very real threat:

The law currently requires a business to secure a city permit to have any arcade game on its premises; it also prohibits the games within 300 feet of a public playground or school or within 1,500 feet of another business with arcade games, and in any neighborhood zoned for residential use; and limits the number depending on square footage of a business, with a maximum of 10.

Well pop the champagne and take a hammer to your piggy bank, because under the new law bars can have four machines and non-bars can have up to ten without securing a permit.

Shit just got real.

Of course, lest shit get too real, the revised regulations on “mechanical amusement devices” do not completely roll back restrictions. Rather, Supervisors Wiener and Breed have made it easier for establishments to carry a limited quantity of arcade machines without going through the Entertainment Commission. For previously illegal arcades such as Free Gold Watch, this paves a pathway towards legitimacy that wasn’t previously available.

So the next time you’re cited for having the audacity to be in Dolores Park past what Supervisor Wiener considers to be an acceptable hour, just remember, Wiener has your best interests at heart.

“Fuck it!”—it's basically our parent's YOLO. And just in time for the last minute gift-giving season, Four Barrel has rolled out a new coffee mug barring the old-timey exclamation of pseudo-subversive whimsy. Only $10!

The “Most San Francisco Photo Ever Taken” that was passed around a few weeks ago was certainly good—featuring a glasshole with Silicon Valley hubris eating his face like a vampire squid and two human unicorn/discoballs trotting past in the background. However, this specimen documented by Olu Johnson might be one better: not only is this photo not questionably staged for explicit internet consumption, the subject appears prepared to ask Siri the very question that is on his shirt (if only he were able).

Was it warm enough for this modern San Franciscan to shed his hoodie? Only Siri knows.

Eater recently interviewed the owners of the delightful rust bucket of a diner It's Tops Coffee Shop, covering its million-year-old history, pink uniforms, stuffed waffles, and, of course, coffee. In fact, their coffee is of such passable quality that it has endeared them to the notoriously snobbish anti-snob Quentin Tarantino:

Have you had any notable people dine here?

[Owner Sheila Chapman]: Let's see, we've had Sharon Stone, Metallica…

[Bruce Chapman]: Who was the big producer guy that did the diner thing, Pulp Fiction? Tarantino? He loves our coffee.

SC: Because he said it's not too strong. It's diner coffee.

(But, seriously, has he tried Four Barrel?)

Anyway, back in simpler days of the Nixon presidency, It's Tops used to serve up 50 different kind of coffee beans “before Safeway and all these stores were doing it.”

We had these shelves filled with different kinds, and each morning, we had a sign listing which country the beans would come from. And my dad would make me blind-taste them, and would say, “Which country is this from?” But we stopped doing that once all the stores got tons of beans.

Downtown Las Vegas, if you have never been, is about a 20 minute cab ride from the Strip, and is a cheaper version of the glitz, glam, and tourist packed casino mecca. The slots are looser, the people not as scandalously dressed, and you can actually get an okay meal for under $10 per person. While some might find this place as an oasis from the over-the-top and in-your-face shit show that is the strip, one man has a vision. That man is Zappos founder Tony Hsieh, and his vision is that of Dolores Park:

Mr. Hsieh, a soft-spoken 39-year-old Internet billionaire who runs Zappos, the online clothing store, plans to do something as transformative. It’s a classic American dream: a Western-scale roll of the dice in a city that suddenly conjured up Belle Époque Paris and ancient Rome out of the desert. The idea this time is to build a version of the Mission district in San Francisco or the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn in downtown Vegas.

Yeah.

Mr. Hsieh has been buying up property all around the downtown strip to house what he feels are the best parts of the Mission: Mom & Pop restaurants and bars, boutique stores, offices that house tech incubators and can host TED talks, and a bike share program. And something about Teslas. While this sounds like a unique thing to do in Las Vegas (as none of those places have anything to do with boobies or yard sticks full of sugar booze), it also sounds absolutely nothing like the Mission. In fact, it sounds a lot like Austin, which is already in a desert in a state that no one particularly wants to go to. It seems like Mr. Hsieh is trying to to bring new life to a floundering section of Las Vegas, which is a good thing, especially for new start-ups that find rental prices in the Mission a wee bit pricey, and need a place to develop and grow. Plus who doesn't love doggy day care? You can't gamble AND watch your dog on vacation, right?

Let's say, for a minute, Mr. Hsieh actually wanted to bring the Mission to Las Vegas. Besides building a two-story version of Four Barrel and a park that's largely unregulated by the DEA or the Nevada Gaming Commission, what else would be necessary for the complete Missionification of downtown Vegas? Would Dr. Teeth move to Vegas and stay exactly the same? Would Cold Beer Cold Water be allowed to sell PBR again without fear? Instead of waking up to a USA Today outside your hotel room, would you wake up to poop and a used needle? What would you want to see in Vegas Mission, if you ever actually did want to see a Vegas version of the Mission to begin with?

Ever since the artisanally-located 299 Valencia sold out, I've been in the market for a new development to scowl at.

NeMa looked promising, with all their egregious and dated hipster appropriation, but their Mid-Market address was far too downtown for my decidedly tony Mission palette. And there was whateverthefuckthey'rebuilding on the corner of 19th and Valencia, which will assuredly charge 650,000+ dollars (also payable in not-Zygna stock options) for a doghouse-sized studio, but, alas, it's hard to roll my eyes out of their sockets over a building still in the plywood phase.

However, I think I found my dream pariah: Vara, the soon-to-be-launched Mactastic crash pad at 15th and Mission, with studio apartments going for The Totally Not Dogshit rate of $2675/month. Curbed SF has all the alluring details:

The wave of gentrification continues in the Mission. Vara, a 202-unit apartment complex with 40 below market rate units, readies to hit the market. The location at the corner of 15th and Mission streets is close to BART and several Muni lines, as well as the very popular Valencia Street. The studio, 1-, 2-, and 3-bedroom units will feature gourmet kitchens, in-unit washer/dryers, free Wi-Fi and walk-in closets. Building amenities include on-site carsharing, fitness center, and a clubhouse. Cats and dogs are also welcome, although breed restrictions apply. The units will start at $2675 for a studio, and up to $4830 for a 3 bedroom.

Curbed rhetorically asks, “Will this new rental building in the Mission face scrutiny?” With reclaimed wood, the aforementioned Totally Not Dogshit rents, and wall art celebrating the basement's “Internet Ready Worker's Union” (which, ugh), we in turn answer, “Sure?”

San Francisco has long been famous for its masochistic lines for brunch and men's haircuts, which see throngs of well-to-doers thumb tirelessly at their iPhones to pass the time, beta testing the very apps they are paid to develop. However, ahead of Saturday's activist Hallmark holiday, a line for the more populist activity of buying danke herb could be found outside of Apothecarium on Market and Church. (We have no doubt that the city was cured of its collective back pain this weekend.)

Sadly, without iPhones and weed itself to make the dulling process of standing in line more tolerable, these folks were forced to slouch about with arm-crossing sobriety. Truly, this elevates these patient partiers to the very top of the line-waiting meritocracy.

Proving that Valencia Street is the new LA, a tipster tells us the techie-adored and whimsically-branded online fashion pusher Betabrand has just signed a lease at 19th and Valencia. Betabrand's founder Chris Lindland confirms: “Yes. We're moving [into 780 Valencia]. Now awaiting city approval for a heliport & livestock permit.”

Betabrand is, perhaps, one of the least obnoxious upscale garbmongers to come to the Mission. They are headquartered in the neighborhood, and their clothes are manufactured in a San Francisco sweatshop, as opposed to an Asian sweatshop. Also, I couldn't find the word “artisan” anywhere on their website.

These, my friends, are the kind of corporate values you could bring home to your mother.

But, yes, their clothes are dorky as shit—dare I say, Marinaish. And I'm certain anyone with a modest income will ever be able to afford to shop there. But if the neighborhood demands seersucker, give the neighborhood seersucker.

Look guys. It's known Adobe Books has been threatened by a number of factors lately, including dramatically increased rent and landlords flat out ignoring large scale citizen activist protests to keep a local institution in place. I know that you think that preserving centrally-located community-based bookstores is somehow important to the continuation of our culture, and that getting rid of bookstores for mass-market retail outlets will erode our neighborhood into a blackness of bumbling, shop-a-holic moronicism.

But I'm just saying, think about it… we could have a Liz Claiborne store here!

When you really think about it, it makes sense. Bookstores are just a novelty of looming obsolescence; a facet of our parent's foregone generation, like newspapers and jazz and Social Security. Our dads went to bookstores, but we stimulate our intellects with ebrochures and tumblogs, and the new Jack Spade shoppe will sell excellent designer handbags to hold all of our Kindles, Kindle Fire, and HD Nook tablets just fine.

I know it seemed that our chance of happiness was ruined, years ago, when some unruly citizens took to the streets and drove American Apparel out of the space next to ATA. And then when that Levi's pop-up store disappeared, I know a lot of us just thought about packing it up and moving to Russian Hill, towards some real cultural landmarks like the Google Bus Stop and the house where they shot The Real World: San Francisco. But this is our opportunity to usher in a new generation to the Mission. We can make a world where our kids can go to school with artisan leather handbags instead of, you know, “books.”

I'm just saying all we have to do is roll over and one of our obsolete, oversized spacial occupants, Adobe Books, can be replaced by a renowned, internationally-certified gender-neutral leather handbag haberdashery.

This is America. This is what we were promised. Gone will be the days when San Francisco residents have to go all the way to the airport and buy the cheapest ticket to anywhere just to get through security to shop for Liz Claiborne at Terminal 3, near the Tommy Bahama and the World News candy stand. If this deal goes through, none of us will have to tell another TSA agent that “I just decided not to go to Dallas/Ft. Worth today.”

So don't get outraged, don't don't write letters, don't protest, and don't petition. With the replacement of culture with large-chain retail, we can finally start what we've all been after this entire time: turning the Mission into a small, downtown Walnut Creek. We can finally replace Arinell Pizza with a California Pizza Kitchen and turn Dear Mom into an even better Dear Mom.

Purse pups are all the rage these days, but, let's face it, you probably don't have enough money to go to TJ Maxx and buy an appropriately-sized handbag for your totally adorbs new teacup. So why not upcycle that PBR box that's been sitting at the foot of your bed for the last few months and shove your dog into that? Great way to save the planet and meet babes!